Thursday, May 1, 2014

#Benghazi

I have to admit, I haven't given two shits about Benghazi. I mean, please proceed, Governor..

The article does give me a glimmer about what the nontroversy seems to be about. Republicans seem to think that the Obama administration covered up that the Benghazi attacks were by an Al Qaeda affiliate. I think that's what's bugging them. The email that has sent them into another paroxysm of rage says...well, I'm not sure, because I don't have a secret Benghazi decoder ring.

There has not and was not - to the best of my knowledge - been any effort to say that the Americans killed in Benghazi were not killed by Muslim extremists. There has not been any effort to say that security was sufficient. (Of course, the lack of security could be tied to Republicans consistently cutting State Department security budgets. Frankly, I would like to see a Senate committee investigate THAT.)

All, apparently, that Republicans are saying is that the Obama Administration didn't understand and convey to the American people the motives of the attackers.

Is that it?

Am I missing anything?

And then we get the whole, "It's not the crime it's the cover-up."

What I see in Benghazi is a mass of projection.

- Four Americans died in Benghazi because security was not good enough. Four thousand Americans died in Iraq because intelligence was cooked and decisions were made based on wishful thinking.

- The "War on Terra" was relentlessly politicized, including raising terror alerts before elections. So therefore the lack of administration statements about the motives of the terrorists must have been political.

- The administration linked the attacks in Benghazi to protests surrounding an anti-Islamic film that were happening around the Muslim world. In other words, they jumped to conclusions. Unlike, say, WMD, they eventually changed their conclusions when new evidence came in.

Frankly, the motives of the attackers is largely irrelevant in the short term. Were they Al Qaeda or were they just angry about the film? Eventually, you need to know the answer to that, but in the short term... who cares? But for Republicans, calling the attacks "acts of terror" instead of "acts of terrorism" could very well lead to impeachment if these idiots get control of the Senate this fall.

I just taught the Clinton years to my AP kids, and the irrationality of Whitewater still staggers me to this day. Despite years and years of investigation and millions of dollars, all we found out is that Bill Clinton is an artful liar about his extra-marital affairs. And yet this is enough for impeachment.

Why a rational voter would hand these clowns power is beyond the powers of my understanding.